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Saturday, August 11, 2012

Voltairine de Cleyre: more of an anarchist than a feminist? (2010)

In recent years, there has been significant interest in the
writings of Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912), with a number of authors
attempting to reassess her work, in some cases drawing increased
attention to the perspective that her ideas constitute a form of
feminism. Remembered also as a poet, anarchist, and atheist, de Cleyre
was born in Leslie, Michigan, a small town south of Lansing. Her
parents, who were impoverished tailors, left Leslie when Voltairine was
about one year old, following the accidental drowning death of another
daughter, Marion, at the age of five. The family moved to St. Johns,
Michigan, a town on the north side of Lansing (Avrich 1978, 19-20; Havel
[1914] 2005, 7). Despite the objections of Voltairine's mother, her
father, an atheist and admirer of Voltaire, created her distinctive
given name to commemorate his own beliefs (Avrich 1978, 19; Havel [1914]
2005, 7; Palczewski 1955, 54; Sartwell 2005, 4).

Schooled at the Convent of Our Lady of Lake Huron, in Sarnia,
Ontario, de Cleyre rebelled against the physical and intellectual
rigidity of her training and rejected religion, although some
commentators feel that she retained a somewhat clerical demeanor, which
DeLamotte (2004, 35) refers to as "an emotional kinship to the
religious sensibility." Her ally in anarchism, the better-known
Emma Goldman ([1932] 2005, 39), believed that these formative years
undermined de Cleyre's confidence, a condition that would last for
the rest of her life. Called Voltai by people who were close to her, de
Cleyre spent a sizable part of her existence in Philadelphia, where she
taught English to Jewish immigrants, as a consequence acquiring some
mastery of Yiddish herself (Streeby 2007, 420). Goldman (35) speculates
that the many hours a day occupied teaching pupils, which she terms
"drudgery," contributed to her friend's constant
condition of exhaustion. A prolific speech-giver, de Cleyre was
sometimes able to travel, and she visited Britain, where she met the
Russian anarchist prince, Peter Kropotkin, as well as Norway, where she
was trailed by police. She wrote articles for both Liberty, the journal
of the American Anarchist, Benjamin R. Tucker, and for mainstream
anarchist Goldman's Mother Earth. In 1902, she was shot by one of
her students, Herman Helcher. Unbalanced and malnourished, Helcher
portrayed himself to police as a jilted lover of Voltairine, whom he
felt was now persecuting him, and this appears to be the motive for the
attack (Avrich 1978, 173; Sartwell 2005, 7).

Characteristically, and in the tradition of some other
revolutionaries, de Cleyre declined to prosecute her assailant. Her
health never fully recovered from this incident, and sometimes her
impaired condition caused her to contemplate suicide. However, she lived
for another decade, eventually being buried in Waldheim Cemetery in the
suburbs of Chicago, (1) where Goldman would later also be interred
(Avrich 1978, 9, 20, 29; Hogeland and Klages 2004, 1342; Sartwell 2005,
3).

De Cleyre's literary writings were proficient, although they
never concealed her political motives. Pateman (2004, iii) points out
that one of the purposes of de Cleyre's stanzas was to show her
"support of those who have used violence, and her desire to
memorialize and celebrate their courage." Franklin Rosemont, the
surrealist bard, called her "a remarkable poet--indeed, probably
the greatest poet-activist in U.S. anarchist history" (5),
observing also that "readers of her essays and speeches can tell at
once that they are reading the work of a poet" (10).

A number of scholars who make reference to de Cleyre say she was an
anarchist, but do not call her a feminist. For instance, Fidler (1985,
107) refers to her as "the American Anarchist Voltairine de
Cleyre." Bright (2006, 20) calls her an "individualist
anarchist." Oberdeck (2007, 436) refers to her as a contributor to
a "circle of anarchist papers." Brouwer (2004, 209) describes
her as a writer of "anarchist rhetoric." Kensinger (2003, 3)
speaks of "the anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre," and Weir
(1997, 139) calls her "the American anarchist Voltairine de
Cleyre." In one place, McElroy (2000, 110) refers to "[t]he
individualist anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre," though in another
article, she tags her as a feminist (2001, 16), and, in a more recent
work, she calls her an "Individualist Anarchist and feminist"
(2003, 38).

Similarly, Meltzer (1996, 378) includes her "among the
anarchists of the past such as the Chicago Martyrs, Lucy Parsons,
Voltairine de Cleyre and Harry Kelly." Martin (1970, 261) portrays
her as "part of the native anarchist movement." In a letter
written by Eugene Debs (1990, 265) and dated May 1908, the leading
socialist wrote, "of course you know that I am not an anarchist and
do not agree to the anarchist philosophy, but i can none the less admire
such a comrade as Voltairine de Cleyre." Elsewhere, she is referred
to as one of "such pivotal anarchists as Emma Goldman, Alexander
Berkman, Voltairine de Cleyre, among countless others" (Sakolsky
2005, 134). Ottanelli (1997) lists de Cleyre as one of several
"prominent anarchists." while Brammer (2000, 12) also deems de
Cleyre "a prominent anarchist," and Halker (1991, 66) terms
her a "fellow anarchist" to her friend, Dyer D. Lum.

Reichert (1976, 339) calls de Cleyre "[o]ne of the most
beautiful souls ever to adopt the libertarian teachings of
anarchism." Pateman (2004, i) says that "de Cleyre consciously
set out to create a specifically anarchist history." Henderson
(2003, 13) speaks of "one individual (Voltairine de Cleyre) who is
today regarded as a example of the ideal of anarchism in
Philadelphia." Later (18), she notes that "Voltairine de
Cleyre remains a strong influence for the current anarchist movement in
Philadelphia." McKinley (1987, 389) names her as "the
American-born anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre," although, in an
earlier paper (1982, 513), he speaks also of "her ideologies of
secularism, feminism, and anarchism." Herrada and Hyry (1999) call
de Cleyre "a Michigan-born anarchist and friend of Emma
Goldman." Writing about Lum, Brooks (1993, 58) notes that
historians have often cast him as a lesser figure, being merely "a
comrade of other more famous anarchists such as Albert Parsons,
Voltairine de Cleyre, or Benjamin Tucker." In another work, Brooks
(1994, 11) observes that de Cleyre was one of a number of
"writers" who "have insisted that anarchism is peculiarly
suited to America." In his introduction to Emma Goldman's
Anarchism and Other Essays, the Czech-born anarchist, Hippolyte Havel
(1910, 13), describes Goldman and de Cleyre as "[t]he two most
prominent representatives of the Anarchist idea in America." He
does not make note of the fact that they were both women.

Other commentators make some mention of de Cleyre's gender
without specifically calling her a feminist. Marsh (1981, 123), for
instance, proclaims her "the second most important woman in the
American anarchist movement," although elsewhere (1978, 541) she
concludes that "de Cleyre systematized the anarchist-feminist
perspective." For Kaye (2005, 178), de Cleyre and Goldman became
"the anarchist movement's foremost women activists."
Huberman (2006, 72) feels that de Cleyre was not only the most talented
female American anarchist, but also a "women's rights and
labor activist" and a "renowned atheist lecturer."
Streeby (2007, 411) refers to "prominent anarchist women, including
Lucy Parsons and Voltairine de Cleyre," as well as to the
"anarchist poet, essayist, and orator Voltairine de Cleyre"
(420). Wexler (1981, 123) describes de Cleyre as an anarchist who once
gave a lecture on the "eighteenth-century feminist," Mary
Wollstonecraft. For her contemporary, Emma Goldman, de Cleyre was simply
"this most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever
produced" (Goldman [1932] 2005, 29; Huberman 2006, 72).

Some observers see her more explicitly as both an anarchist and a
feminist. Sartwell (2005, 3) portrays her as both, and also lauds the
reputation of de Cleyre and Goldman as "the two great women of
American anarchism." Mullaney (1990, 300, 316) includes de Cleyre
in her lists of both "radical women" and "anarchist
women." Molyneux (1986, 123) describes de Cleyre as someone from
North America participating in the development of a form of anarchism
that included "a distinctive feminist current." Best and
Nocella (2007) describe de Cleyre as an "American anarchist and
feminist writer." Tone (2006, 232) writes of "the noted
anarchist and feminist Voltairine de Cleyre." Palczewski (1993,
152) calls her "a largely untapped feminist resource," and
describes her intellectual progression as follows: "originally a
freethinker and socialist, she became an anarchist and feminist"
(143). Later, she cautions that "De Cleyre rarely combined her
views of women and anarchism in the same discourse" (146). In
another article, she describes de Cleyre as follows:

De Cleyre is an important rhetorical and feminist figure because
her anarchist feminism is an early precursor to many of the radical
critiques of women's sexual status that came out of the
"second wave" of feminism. (Palczewski 1995, 55)

Rosemont (1990, 5) describes de Cleyre as "one of the foremost
American exemplars of international anarchism," but says also that
"a strong feminist dimension distinguished De Cleyre's
anarchism from most other anarchisms" (7). DeLamotte (2004, 4) says
starkly that "Voltairine de Cleyre was an American anarchist
feminist." Presley (2005b, 17) describes de Cleyre as being
"even less known among feminists today than among anarchists."
Accepting her inclusion in a study of "anarchist women," Marso
(2003, 313) refers to her also as "Goldman's contemporary,
feminist Voltairine de Cleyre" (313).

Sometimes, even though scholars attribute feminism to Voltairine de
Cleyre, the feminism may nonetheless be explained as an aspect of her
anarchism. Discussing director Lina Wertmuller's movie, "Swept
Away," Russo Grace (2007, 67) coins the term
"anarcha-feminism," arguing that anarcha-feminists such as
Wertmuller believe that "the gender struggle is an integral part of
the class struggle and both are a fundamental part of the
"anarchist" struggle against the state." He continues by
noting that anarcha-feminism was "inspired by early twentieth
century thinkers and authors like Emma Goldman and Voltairine de
Cleyre" (67). Similarly, although in Anarchist Portraits, Paul
Avrich (1990, 87) describes her as "Voltairine de Cleyre, the
American anarchist poet," in his book devoted to de Cleyre, Avrich
(1978, 158) writes: "Voltairine de Cleyre's whole life was a
revolt against this system of male domination which, like every form of
tyranny and exploitation, ran contrary to her anarchistic spirit."
Margaret Marsh concludes that, although Avrich's book
"includes a brief discussion of her feminist philosophy, for the
most part the focus is on the anarchist movement" (Marsh 1981,
124). Marsh focuses a chapter of her own book on de Cleyre as a woman
struggling to succeed: "The organized women's rights movement
was too conventional for her, although she considered herself a feminist
and expressed admiration for the suffragists" (Marsh 1981, 128).
Horwitz, Kowal, and Palczewski (2008, 631) present de Cleyre, Goldman,
and Lucy Parsons as "representative of feminist anarchism in all
its complexity."

Other authors see her primarily through the prism of her feminism,
rather than as an anarchist. For example, Hecht (2004, 412) describes de
Cleyre as "a renowned atheist lecturer," and as an advocate of
"atheism, as well as women's rights and labor rights."
Brigati (2004, vii) calls her "both a political activist and
women's rights advocate."

Several writers reference a connection between de Cleyre and Mary
Wollstonecraft, the eighteenth-century British author of A Vindication
of the Rights of Woman. For example, DeLamotte writes:

One of de Cleyre's great predecessors in the disruption of
false images of women was Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), whose
pervasive influence on her feminism is evident ... De Cleyre was
demonstrably influenced by Wollstonecraft's view of marriage as a
form of prostitution. (DeLamotte 2004, 212)

Correspondingly, Marsh (1978, 542) observes:

De Cleyre deplored the legalistic and political emphases of the
woman's [sic] rights movement of her own day ... Intellectually,
she was far more compatible with such isolated rebels as Mary
Wollstonecraft, in honor of whom she wrote poetry and delivered
lectures.

De Cleyre's biographer, Paul Avrich (1978, 14) writes about
her "striking resemblance to Mary Wollstonecraft, the inaugurator
of the modern women's rights movement, about whom she often wrote
and lectured." Indeed, de Cleyre (2005, 217) did admire
Wollstonecraft, and, in 1893, she penned a poem entitled "Mary
Wollstonecraft," a eulogy that ends with the line, "She liveth
still" (De Cleyre [1914] 2005, 49; 1990, 31; 2004, 208).

Voltairine De Cleyre as an Anarchist

That Voltairine de Cleyre is rightfully classified as an anarchist,
and, moreover, one who has been sadly neglected by scholars, is not a
difficult proposition to accept. One of the key confirming factors is
surely the events that have come to be called the Haymarket Tragedy and
de Cleyre's reaction to them, including her confrontation of the
reality of what she considered judicial murder in the United States.

Paul Avrich (1980, 1) calls the events at Haymarket Square in
Chicago on May 4, 1886 "one of the most famous incidents in the
history of the anarchist movement." Police tried to close a meeting
of anarchists who were protesting the violence of the previous night,
when officers had fired into a crowd of strikers from the McCormick
Reaper Works, killing several people. A bomb was thrown by an unknown
assailant, and the radical leaders were blamed for the bombing, and
prosecuted for conspiracy to commit murder. These events would
eventually be described by de Cleyre (1980, 35) as follows: "A
peaceable meeting of protest against a murderous attack of the police on
strikers."

Seven anarchists were arrested. An eighth, Albert Parsons, who had
left the meeting before the bomb was thrown, voluntarily turned himself
in, believing there was no chance that he could be found guilty, but all
eight were convicted and seven sentenced to hang. Two had their death
penalties commuted to life imprisonment, and one received a sentence of
fifteen years. Four were executed, but the fifth, Louis Lingg, cheated
the hangman by committing suicide in advance of the appointed hour. In
1893, the three men who were still alive and in jail were pardoned
because of the obvious unfairness of the trial by Governor John P.
Altgeld (Avrich 1980; De Cleyre 1980, 8; DeLamotte 2004, 4-5); for de
Cleyre, this was an act of benevolence that she notes in the
introduction to her poem, "John P. Altgeld," would end the
Illinois politician's career (De Cleyre [1914] 2005, 56; 1990, 31).
Haymarket, it is clear, is important because it was a catalyst that
confirmed de Cleyre as an anarchist, and it is the key to understanding
the sort of anarchist that she was. As DeLamotte (2004, 5) notes, the
event forced de Cleyre to ask herself "whether "justice under
law" is ever possible." The knowledge that the police and the
government could kill innocent men brought out the harsh reality of life
in the United States:

It is all false that the hanging was done because of their
preaching violence; it is not violence the ruling classes object to; for
they themselves rule by violence ... It is the social change they fear,
the equalization of men. (De Cleyre 1980, 21)

Temporarily living a secluded life in St. Johns, de Cleyre had
initially been outraged by reports of the Haymarket bomb, and had called
for the perpetrators to be executed (Avrich 1978, 49; Reichert 1976,
340). "I believed the newspapers," she would say later.
"I thought those men had thrown that bomb, unprovoked, into a mass
of men and women" (De Cleyre 1980, 23). Soon, her growing
conviction that the judicial aftermath was, rather, the trial of people
who had merely spoken out caused her to change her evaluation. Many
years later, she (39) would say that "[t]he world outside our
country thinks very correctly that our comrades were tried for being
Anarchists and hanged for being Anarchists." In fact, she pointed
out that a significant number of people's political beliefs changed
as a result of the framing of the Chicago anarchists-"for every
drop of blood you spilled on that November day you made an
Anarchist" (3). In another speech, the rhetoric is identical:

[M]any a one will say with me tonight, in answer to the question,
"What made you an Anarchist?" "The hanging in
Chicago." (De Cleyre 1980, 21)

In a speech delivered in Boston nine years after the Haymarket
Tragedy, de Cleyre asked:

What is the most priceless lesson we can learn from the martyrdom
of Parsons, Fischer, Engel, Lingg, and Spies? (De Cleyre 1980, 1)

For de Cleyre herself, the lesson was surely an anarchist one, that
the state, the police, and the legal system were quite capable of
lynching their political opponents. Later in her life, she would refer
to "the five men done to death by the State of Illinois 23 years
ago" (44).

Streeby (2007, 428, fn 1) notes that "Haymarket is a pivotal
event in many narratives of US labor history." Moreover, for
anarchists like de Cleyre, Haymarket represented a breaking point that,
at least in the rhetoric they used, assumed a spiritual significance.
For example, McKinley (1987, 389) observes that, in a speech, the
anarchist William Bailie compared the Haymarket executions to the
crucifixion of Jesus. Explaining the pious language used by de Cleyre,
notwithstanding her own lack of religious faith, when she wrote about
the incident and trial, McKinley concludes that "she understood the
power of religious imagery long after she had rejected all dogma"
(389). Nor was interpretation of the outrage limited to political
oratory and tracts. It has been argued that the Haymarket killings
influenced Herman Melville's novel, Billy Budd, changing its final
form, as well as a number of other literary works (see, for example,
Carter 1950; Wallace 1975).

Other commentators have proffered quite different interpretations
of what took place to de Cleyre's. Most of the journalists of the
time called for blood. Salvatore (1985, 772) notes that "[t]he
city's newspapers, its leading citizens, and its business community
almost unanimously charged that the deed was the responsibility of
Chicago's anarchist community."

Among scholarly writers who are more skeptical about the goals of
the Chicago radical community, Landsman (1986, 832-33) writes that
"[t]he Haymarket defendants were men of high principles, but they
were political zealots, not saints. Guaneri (1985, 79) complains that
"in preaching "propaganda by deed," many of the
anarchists-including at least three of the Haymarket
defendants-applauded assassination, routinely carried dynamite, and
urged violent retaliation against police." Similarly, DeMille
notes:

The defense was not a denial that the accused men had for years
advocated the use of physical force. It was not a denial that they had,
on that very May 4th, printed the exhortation "To arms!" and
"Revenge!" and "Workingmen arm yourselves and appear in
full force!" in their dailies and in circulars spread among the
desperate unemployed. It was not a denial that one of them had been
making bombs similar in workmanship to the one that produced such
devastating results. It was a denial that there was proof that any one
of the eight defendants had thrown this particular bomb. (DeMille 1946,
546)

Sartwell (2005, 5) describes Haymarket simply as "an explosion
to which the anarchist leaders were never convincingly connected."

Despite the continuing debate, de Cleyre's revised take on
what had happened at Haymarket is today echoed by the majority of
analysts, just as it was by the state governor, even if others do not
share her conclusions about the possibilities for justice in the United
States. For example, DeLamotte writes:

John Altgeld, governor of Illinois concluded in 1893 after an
extensive review of the trial that every aspect of it-from the selection
of obviously biased jurors, to police influence of testimony with
threats of torture and bribes of money and jobs, to the sheer
"fabrication" of evidence, to the judge's unprecedented
final instructions to the jury that the state need not prove that the
defendants had influenced the perpetrator or even find out who the
perpetrator was-represented a serious miscarriage of justice. (DeLamotte
2004, 5)

De Grazia (2006, 310) says that Governor Altgeld came to "the
same conclusion reached by many dispassionate observers before him, and
most such observers after him-there was no particle of evidence that any
of the convicted men knew or had anything to do with whoever threw the
bomb that killed the policemen at Haymarket." Laslett (1987, 192)
refers to the trial as "judicial murder."

The two prominent contemporary book-length studies of Haymarket by
Avrich (1984) and Green (2006) are compatible with de Cleyre's
revised viewpoint, although both authors have their critics. For
instance, Oliver (2007, 147) says of Green's book that it would
have benefited from the inclusion of "a detailed presentation from
the police perspective." Similarly, Guaneri (1985, 78) criticizes
Avrich's portrayal with the comment that "[t]he fair-minded
reader might like to know more about Judge Joseph Gary's background
prior to the case and to hear his published defense of the trial."
Additionally, Dubofsky (2007, 302) says of Green's book that the
latter's "sympathies lie with the eight condemned anarchists,
whom he values as true martyrs to labor's cause," continuing
that "Parsons, Spies, et al. did not throw the bomb at Haymarket,
nor did they participate in a conspiracy to do so, but they did play
with dynamite, and those who do so, as the old saying goes, suffer the
consequences" (302).

Another way in which de Cleyre seems to be indefatigably anarchist
lies in her sympathies with Peter Kropotkin, whom she thought of as a
person "of scientific pre-eminence" (De Cleyre 2005, 54) and
as "the greatest man, save Tolstoy alone, that Russia has
produced" (Avrich 1978, 109). Avrich documents her two meetings
with the Russian anarcho-communist thinker that took place in London,
England in 1897, the first at the apartment of Will Wess, and the second
at Kropotkin's house (109).

DeLamotte (2004, 39) describes de Cleyre as being "profoundly
influenced by Peter Kropotkin." Reichert (1976, 342) writes:
"Basically a moralist, Voltairine reflected the same profound grasp
of the power of ethical thought as did Peter Kropotkin." Elsewhere
(346), he adds, "Like Peter Kropotkin, whom she greatly admired,
Voltairine de Cleyre had no illusions that anarchism might be actually
implemented in her lifetime-or ever, for that matter."

There are certainly a number of similarities between de
Cleyre's and Kropotkin's ideas. Marsh (1981, 132), for
example, argues that both anarchists ultimately saw the solution to
women's exploitation by men as residing in a future utopia where it
would be unnecessary for people to work very many hours each week.
DeLamotte comments:

From de Cleyre's perspective, achieving Kropotkin's
"plenitude of existence: ... depended integrally on the elimination
of "sex slavery" as one of the underpinnings of the current
social order. (DeLamotte 2004, 107)

Similarly, when DeLamotte (2004, 63) notes that de Cleyre believed
"the state is by nature violent and exists to protect a
minority's appropriation, by force, of the earth's resources,
of technological resources, and of human labor," she points out
that de Cleyre even attributed her own shooting by Helcher to the
latter's dearth of "proper food and healthy labor"
(DeLamotte 2004, 63, Avrich, 174). The writings of Kropotkin, many of
which appeared in the form of pamphlets, are full of such accounts, and
Avrich (1978, 168) notes that de Cleyre was impressed by one of
collection of these polemics, Fields, Factories and Workshops. In
another work, Mutual Aid, Kropotkin gives the example of horses and
cattle in Siberia which did not attain their full potential due to the
harshness of conditions ([1914] 1955 73-74); elsewhere, he frequently
describes the plight of laborers so overworked that they could not think
clearly enough to analyze their situation. Avrich (1978, 167) concludes
that "[l]ike Kropotkin ... she was the natural enemy of an economic
system that reduced labor to sheer drudgery while starving the
workers."

Additionally, Reichert (1976, 350), points out that
"Voltairine de Cleyre insisted with Kropotkin that society must
reflect man's spiritual concern for his fellowman." For
Kropotkin ([1914] 1955), this concern is surely innate, learned when we
were simpler species, and it has been preserved and modified through
evolution. DeLamotte identifies de Cleyre's opinion as being like
Kropotkin in the conviction that "the formal details of the new
society would develop naturally" (DeLamotte 2004, 26).

Finally, even though Nettlau does not see de Cleyre as a true
anarchist, in the following passage, he defines de Cleyre's beliefs
in a way that many other commentators would claim makes both de Cleyre
and Kropotkin explicitly anarchists of a distinctive type:

Voltairine de Cleyre and C.L. James gave expression to these first
feelings of revolt on the part of those who, while they were not
anarchists in the present accepted sense of the word, were nevertheless
filled with horror at the spectacle of statism and the insolent
domination of monopolists over the natural riches of half a continent.
(Nettlau, 1996, 31)

Voltairine de Cleyre was also heavily influenced by individualistic
anarchism, and specifically by the strain known as "American
Anarchism," a belief system that is primarily associated with the
writings of Tucker, Josiah Warren, and Lysander Spooner. Emma Goldman
([1932] 2005, 34) notes that de Cleyre was inspired by reading
Tucker's periodical, Liberty, to which she would later contribute.
Presley (2005a, 47) concurs that a "major influence that propelled
Voltairine toward anarchism was Benjamin Tucker's individualist
anarchist journal Liberty"

However, such comparisons can sometimes be exaggerated. Sartwell
distinguishes de Cleyre's anarchism from that of Goldman, with whom
it has often been associated, as follows:

Where Goldman drew on the work of European thinkers such as
Kropotkin and Bakunin, de Cleyre associated her thought with
Americans such as Paine, Jefferson, Emerson, and the individualist
writer Benjamin Tucker. Where Goldman was given to the free
expression of desire, de Cleyre spent much of her youth in a
nunnery and even after she rejected organized religion she remained
quite a severe ascetic. (2005, 3)

It is difficult to know where to start a rebuttal of
Sartwell's argument, since it contains so many disputable points.
De Cleyre's interest in Kropotkin and the many similarities between
her ideas and his have been explored in earlier paragraphs of this
paper. De Cleyre spent no time as a nunnery novice; rather, she merely
attended school in a Catholic convent, where she had the formal status
of a Protestant, took classes throughout the day, was required to pray,
and rebelled against its teachings, even running away (Avrich 1978, 31).
She had relationships with several men to whom she was not married, and
gave birth to a child out of wedlock. Sartwell himself names two men
with whom she was romantically involved, Samuel Gordon (2005, 4) and
James Elliott (6), and notes that "[s]he had several lovers over
the years" (6). And her anarchism is surely mainstream in many
ways, not really American Anarchism in all of the aspects we would
associate with Tucker. Some scholars, such as Delamotte (2004, 25),
argue that de Cleyre moved from being an individualistic thinker to a
more communitarian and European-influenced anarchist later in her life.
Others, would say that she embraced a range of ideas that have been
associated with different kinds of anarchism. Rosemont (1990, 10), sees
her as being beyond classification. He maintains that "De
Cleyre's anarchism was largely inspired by poets."

Nonetheless, the influence of individualistic anarchism can be seen
in de Cleyre's ardent defense of what Hogeland and Klages (2004,
1341-42) refer to as "the sanctity of the individual," a
passion that they trace back to the asceticism of her Catholic school
training. She opposed authority and the compulsion that it invoked,
including loyalty to any particular strain of anarchism itself (De
Cleyre [1914] 2005, 115-117; DeLamotte 2004, 108).

Marsh (1981, 125-27) also references the time de Cleyre spent at
the convent school in ontario, noting that some anarchist commentators
have in consequence cast her as engaged in resisting the oppression of
dogma; she mentions that, later in life, de Cleyre herself presents her
years at Our Lady of the Lake as having this effect. Presley (2005b, 24)
portrays de Cleyre as advocating the "complete individuality of
woman."

Voltairine de Cleyre as a Feminist

Another influence upon de Cleyre was Dyer D. Lum (1839-1893), who
is mentioned above, and who was her teacher, friend, and erstwhile
sweetheart. Brooks (1993, 57) writes that one of Lum's skills was
the fact that he "could bridge ethnic differences, for despite
being native-born, he had substantial contacts with immigrant
radicals." That description applies also to de Cleyre, who had many
connections to emigres in the United States, to anarchists in Europe,
and to revolutionists in Mexico. Likewise, as Marsh (1981, 129)
observes, Lum and de Cleyre shared a "frustration with the
factional disputes that split the anarchist movement and ... alienated
working-class converts."

Although de Cleyre and Lum were lovers for a while, her pregnancy
resulted from a relationship with James Elliott (1849-1935). Too
unhealthy to risk an abortion, de Cleyre did not want to be a
mother-Palczewski (1995, 56) says "she refused to marry"-and
she blamed Ellis for the pregnancy (DeLamotte 2004, 84). The child,
Harry de Cleyre, was apparently not told who his mother was until he was
fifteen (Marsh 1981, 130, 147) and he was seventeen before they met
(Goldman [1932] 2005, 42). Reichert writes:

Like Rousseau, she could develop a carefully wrought theory by
which to educate the children of the world but had no ability to
love children of her own. (1976, 341)

For Marsh, Lum's influence on de Cleyre was necessarily
limited, because he did not address the condition of women explicitly.
She writes:

Although Dyer Lum directed and to a large extent shaped de
Cleyre's early education as an anarchist, ... De Cleyre's
active exploration of the Woman Question, manifested both in her
published work and private correspondence, dated from 1891, a year after
the birth of her son. Prior to that time, although she had demanded the
freedom to make her choices as a human being without the hindrance of
feminine constraints, she was less aware of the costs of such an
assertion; motherhood forced her to confront the consequences of her
stance. (Marsh 1981, 131-32)

Marsh (130) finds "De Cleyre's obvious neglect of her
son" to be "somewhat puzzling." However, this occurrence
might be more understandable if it can be determined that de Cleyre was
more committed to radical politics than she was interested in being a
mother. Alternatively, perhaps it constitutes evidence that she was a
feminist of some kind.

To answer the latter question, it is necessary to say what exactly
is denoted by feminism. For many scholars, attempts to define that word
are necessarily tricky due to the sheer difficulty of summarizing a
wealth of perspectives. Thus, Taylor (1989, 477) writes that
"contemporary feminist thought encompasses diverse beliefs and is
by no means a monolithic perspective." Outshoorn (2004, 5)
concludes that "contemporary authors, to avoid the deep divisions
in present-day feminism, will speak of 'women's
movements.'" Offen (1988, 131) says: "As things now
stand, scholars have to invent their own definitions of feminism."
Similarly, though, perhaps unintentionally, excluding the possibility of
males being feminists, Sjoberg writes:

In this era of the increasing importance of gender, exactly what is
meant by "feminism" is still unclear. Feminists are women who
advocate for gender rights, but what they mean by that and what
tactics they employ sometimes seem so diverse that the utility of
grouping "feminists" has been questioned. (2006, 31-32)

Sapiro (1994, 478) describes feminist theories as being "a
constant discussion among the many perspectives," which
"continues to change over time." Bunch is able to conclude:

The initial tenets of feminism have already been established-the
idea that power is based on gender differences and that men's
illegitimate power over women taints all aspects of society, for
instance. (1998, 15)

Nevertheless, Offen cautions that people use feminism in so many
different ways, and thus it is necessary for each person to say what
they mean by the concept. She continues:

We find contemporary scholars employing both dualistic and
tripartite distinctions. Among the dualistic distinctions proposed
by scholars and activists in recent years are "old" and "new"
feminisms, "social" and "hard-core" feminisms, "first-wave" and
"second-wave" feminisms, "classical" and "modern" feminisms,
"maximalist" and "minimalist" feminisms, and "humanistic" and
"gynocentric" feminism. Tripartite distinctions include the
"egalitarian," "evangelical," and "socialist" feminisms identified
in the recent British past (i.e., since 1800) by sociologist Olive
Banks, and the "liberal," "Marxist," and "radical" feminisms
located by located by Zillah Eisenstein and others in the
contemporary American scene. (1988, 132)

In the United States, first wave feminism refers to the activities
of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Sojourner
Truth, Jeannette Rankin, Myra Colby Bradwell, and others, many of whom
came to feminism after fighting to end slavery. This movement was
primarily interested in securing rights, particularly the right to vote,
but also the ability of women to keep their earnings, and have access to
employment such as the legal profession, which Colby Bradwell
eventually, after a protracted fight, achieved in Illinois. The means by
which these gains were to be achieved was generally through legal and
constitutional reforms, including peaceful protest. But anarchism favors
the attainment of people's needs, rather than the acquisition of
rights (see Kropotkin [1927] 1968, 60-61; Shone 2000; Sullivan and
Sullivan 1998), and anarchists, including de Cleyre, are often willing
to use violence to attain at least some of their goals, so it is hard to
see de Cleyre as advocating first wave feminism. In "Direct
Action." she wrote:

It would be very stupid to say that no good results are ever
brought about by political action; sometimes good things do come about
that way. But never until individual rebellion, followed by mass
rebellion, has forced it. (De Cleyre [1914] 2005, 231)

In "The Case of Woman Versus Orthodoxy," where de Cleyre
(2005, 219) credits "in every freedom-going spark the risen
dead," specifically naming Lucretia Mott and "that grand old
negress, Sojourner Truth," she argues for basic economic equality
between men and women, which she calls "the right of
self-maintenance" (218), but which, in characteristically
anarchistic fashion, could be viewed as really being a need rather than
a right. Furthermore, for de Cleyre, to achieve fulfillment of such
needs requires the acceptance of revolutionary methods:

There will be no cessation in that revolt, no matter what ticket
men vote or fail to vote, until the chains are broken. (De Cleyre [1914]
2005, 238)

Second wave feminism is the term used for the renewed activities of
the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In the United States, many credit Betty
Friedan with sparking this resurgence. Mitchell writes:

If a single inspiration for the movement is to be cited, it was the
publication in 1963 of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.
(1973, 52)

Attacking what she saw as the melancholy and lack of creative
opportunities that contemporary women experienced in their daily lives
as they worked at home, Friedan (1964, 338) lambasted the "feminine
mystique" that "says that the highest value and the only
commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity"
(37). Dolan, Deckman, and Swers summarize the message of this book as
follows:

Friedan found that these women were deeply dissatisfied with their
lives as housewives and could not reconcile the intellectual and
social stimulation of their college years with the isolation and
routine of housework and child care. (2007, 25)

Friedan's contribution, however, is controversial, since she
published a second key volume at the beginning of the 1980s, called The
Second Stage. There, Friedan (1981, 23) suggested that there was now
"a danger today in feminist rhetoric, rigidified in reaction
against the past, harping on the same old problems in the same old way,
leaving unsaid what's really bothering women and men in and beyond
the new urgencies of personal economic survival." Now a feminist
mystique was abroad, attacking the institution of the family, itself
doing substantial damage to women's lives (McElroy 2001, 103; Rosen
2000, 335).

In a development that has been apparent since the 1990s, though
some of its roots go back much earlier, dissatisfaction with second wave
maxims and achievements prompted the categorization of a third, less
polemical current. Shaw and Lee (2004, 11) say of these thinkers that,
"[c]oming of age during the Reagan years of the 1980s, they grew up
with feminism as well as the resistance or backlash to it ... Third wave
issues focus on sexuality and identity and tend not to have arisen from
a mass-based social movement." Iannello writes that:

Third-wave feminism can be described as individual, multicultural,
and sexual.... Third-wave feminism is sexual in that it focuses on
the pleasures of womanhood through sexual freedom. An example of
this new sexuality is reflected in popular culture through
television shows such as Sex and the City, where female characters
explore issues of female sexual freedom across both gender and
generational lines. (2005, 335)

Alternatively, Cornell argues:

The feminism I defend sets the reconciliation of sexual freedom
with social equality at the heart of its political program. But we
need to rethink the fundamental premises of our feminism if we are
to achieve that reconciliation. (1998, xii)

Second wave feminists have not been warm to such developments. In
particular, they have tended to see third wavers as sounding a retreat
from core values, perhaps out of fear of men and of the concomitant
abhorrence that some feminist tracts have engendered. In particular,
there is an oft-stated view that younger women have somehow been
intimidated away from articulating a (second wave) philosophy that
remains in their interest. For example, Steinem complains:

Given the danger to a male-dominant system if young women stop
internalizing this political message of derived identity, it's no
wonder that those who try to kick the addiction-and, worse yet, to
help other women do the same-are likely to be regarded as odd or
dangerous by everyone from parents to peers. (1983, 214-15)

Harding writes in similar fashion:

The term "feminism" is too radical for some people and too
conservative for others. It is common today to find people
struggling specifically to improve women's conditions but refusing
to characterize their efforts as feminist. (1991, 23)

Hooks concludes:

Say that you are feminist to most men, and automatically you are
seen as the enemy. You risk being seen as a man-hating woman. Most
young women fear that if they call themselves feminist, they will
lose male favor, they will not be loved by men. (2004, 107)

Hogeland echoes the sentiment as follows:

Young women may believe that a feminist identity puts them out of
the pool for many men, limits the options of who they might become
with a partner, how they might decide to live. (2004, 566)

Do second-wavers misunderstand the reason why younger women are
reluctant to apply the term feminist to themselves? Sometimes, their
approach reads like a proclamation that, if you are unable to agree with
me completely, accepting my ideology without any revisions, this must
necessarily be because you are terrified of men and their potential
reaction. ironically, such rationalizations often emphasize women's
"choice" of how to live their lives, though it is frankly hard
to see many women today as having much actual choice, given their
economic circumstances, a sentiment with which de Cleyre would surely
agree. Excluded from the second wavers' meditations is apparently
the possibility that some women might "choose" equality,
rather than favoritism for women. Their explanations identify men, once
again, as being at fault. Yet it is hard to believe, precisely because
of the prolific accomplishments of the second wave, that most men today
would reject a woman because she is a feminist.

Not everyone has been willing to accept second wave feminism's
excuses for the lessening of its support. Although Hymowitz advocates
traditional marriage and writes from a conservative point of view, she
appreciates the failure of second wave feminists to welcome third wave
adjustments:

It's no wonder that feminists have a hard time accepting that
trends like these could represent what women actually want. After all,
feminists of the 1960s and '70s took to the streets on the premise
that women wanted to escape from the prison house of the bourgeois home.
(Hymowitz 2006, 130)

In a chapter called "The End of Herstory," Hymowitz
concludes: "But this explanation falls far short. Feminism is not
simply suffering from a P. R. problem. It's just over. As in
finished" (2006, 127).

From within the second-wave movement, Phyllis Chesler has
criticized her colleagues too, and has also been skewered in response.
More balanced than Hymowitz, she writes:

Young people may embrace ideals and principles that are quite
demanding. Not everyone can "keep on keeping on" for the rest
of their lives. In some ways, Second Wave feminism had its day, did its
work in the world-it's over. On the other hand, let me suggest that
the Second Wave of feminism is not yet altogether over; our successors
are still continuing this Wave's work. (Chesler 2001, 441)

While it might be reasonable to dismiss Hymowitz as a conservative
anti-feminist, application of the second term to Chesler, or to a third
wave "pro-men" type of feminist such as Camille Paglia is more
problematic. Shaw and Lee (2004, 12) beg the question when they define
"anti-feminist activity" as including "women who claim to
be feminists yet are resistant to its core principles." They then
name Paglia and her ally, Christina Hoff Sommers, as members of this
group of "anti-feminists" (12). But Paglia and Sommers would
see themselves as "equity feminists," opponents of the
extremism that obliges Shaw and Lee to define them as opponents (McElroy
2001; Paglia 1991; Sommers 1994).

The early 1990s saw the appearance of Susan Faludi's book,
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, which likewise
attempts to explain the downturn in support for second wave ideals by
resisting all criticism and blaming men (Rosen 2000, 334). Faludi
writes:

The backlash decade produced one long, painful and unremitting
campaign to thwart women's progress ... News-stands and airwaves
may have been awash with frightening misinformation on spinster
booms, birth dearths, and deadly childcare-yet women continued to
postpone their wedding dates, limit their family size and combine
work with having children. (1992, 492)

Sapiro sums up Faludi's book as saying that:

Following some of the early successes of the new women's movement,
a vehement backlash developed in almost all walks of life during
the 1980s that warred against the advances women had made and were
further claiming, and that sought to restore women to a more
traditional and subordinate place. (1994, 466)

However, others would see the situation differently. Paglia (1994,
180), for example, speaks of "a problem that the feminist
establishment refuses to face: career women in the Anglo-Saxon world
have desexed themselves. Latin countries still acknowledge and celebrate
the sexual power of woman." And Kipnis concludes, with an eye on
the failings of both second and third wave approaches:

With feminism's declining drawing power, the present condition of
women has often been designated "postfeminism." The main difference
is this: in place of yesterday's tyrannical husbands and social
restrictions, today we have the girlfriend industry, and voluntary
servitude to self-improvement ... women end up more corseted and
restricted than ever. (2006, 10-11)

For Delamotte (2004, 109-111), Voltairine de Cleyre's story
"The Heart of Angiolillo," about an anarchist couple's
relationship that is undermined by the woman's need to perform
domestic labor, is a good vehicle for the writer's feminist ideas,
allowing her to present women's work in the home as a form of labor
exploitation. Of course, such irony involving intention and reality has
been noticed also by many others, including Abigail Adams, who, in her
correspondence with her husband, wryly assessed the accomplishments of
the Founding Fathers; Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who
found themselves segregated from men at an anti-slavery conference in
England in 1840; and by Kropotkin ([1906] 1990, 154), who warns that
women liberated from a life working at home "will always throw
domestic toil on to another woman."

However, a point that perhaps needs to be made is that, if gender
slavery is a form of economic or class oppression, with gender being one
of the bases for social stratification, then, de Cleyre's analysis,
at root, may not be distinctively feminist. Is de Cleyre here not
denying the fundamental importance of gender to wife exploitation, and
relegating it to a sub-species of class warfare? This issue will be
discussed in more detail later in the paper.

When DeLamotte (2004, 111) continues by noting "the
imbrication of gender oppression with other forms of oppression in de
Cleyre's feminist theory," she does not address the topic of
whether de Cleyre may not really have a feminist theory at all, but,
rather, an anarchist theory that, quite naturally, rejects the
oppression of women. And when she (115) states that "De
Cleyre's analysis of power relations in general" is
"deeply intertwined with a more specific analysis of women's
subordination," again she may be indicating little more than the
fact that anarchism's desire for liberty includes women too.

Furthermore, when de Cleyre writes that "[m]arriage is not in
the interest of women. It is a pledge from the marrying man to the male
half of society" (De Cleyre 2005, 223; DeLamotte 2004, 81), she
expresses a view that is clearly not shared my the vast majority of
feminists today, nor has it been throughout the history of the last two
hundred years. Similarly, as it is explicated by Presley, de
Cleyre's approach to men is quite atypical:

Her own unfortunate experiences with most of her lovers, who even
without the ties of formal marriage, treated her as a sex object
and servant, convinced Voltairine that even living with a man was
to be avoided. (2005b, 24)

Speaking of the writer's essay, "The Gates of
Freedom," Marsh brings out the anarchism in de Cleyre's
position:

[D]e Cleyre wanted women-in countless singular defiant acts-to
challenge traditional feminine expectations, to refuse to marry, to bear
children, or to fulfill wifely and maternal duties. In effect, she
advocated a leaderless general strike against marriage and motherhood.
Her goal in this essay was to find an anarchist solution to the problem
of female subordination. (Marsh 1981, 133)

Marsh continues as follows:

De Cleyre's importance as a feminist rests primarily on her
willingness to confront issues that the organized women's rights
movement sidestepped or avoided, such as the emotional and psychological
(in addition to the economic) dependence on men within the nuclear
family structure, and female sexuality. She also lived in conformity
with her feminist principles, which forced those who came into contact
with her to confront her philosophy in the particular as well as in the
abstract. (Marsh 1981, 146)

Here, Marsh is correct that mainstream feminists have not generally
argued for abandoning their children or rejected the institution of
marriage. When DeLamotte (2004, 10-11) writes that "[o]ne of De
Cleyre's major interests was the question of how women in
particular can resist the configuring of their inner lives by the
social, political, and economic configurations of an oppressive
society," again, the same issues can be raised.

As Marsh (1981, 153-55) perhaps realizes, because she discusses
Friedrich Engels in some detail, an apt comparison is with The Origin of
the Family, Private Property, and the State, by Engels, which was
written after Marx's death, and which discusses the development of
the family as an institution.

The view articulated by others mentioned above, including
Voltairine de Cleyre, that, in marriage, stratification is conducted on
the basis of gender, was also held by Engels, who argued:

In the great majority of cases today, at least in the possessing
classes, the husband is obliged to earn a living and support his family,
and that in itself gives him a position of supremacy, without any need
for special legal titles and privileges. Within the family he is the
bourgeois and the wife represents the proletariat. (Engels 1886)

Building on the ideas of Engels, whom she says had "many
valuable insights," the British sociologist, Juliet Mitchell (1973,
79) suggests that, while the modern family may have functioned
appropriately under a feudal system, it has today, under capitalism,
become an instrument of oppression for women (152-53). She describes the
transformation of the institution of the family as follows:

[T]he peasant masses of feudal society had individual property;
their ideal was simply more of it. Capitalist society seemed to offer
more because it stressed the idea of individual private property in a
new context ... Thus it offered individualism (an old value) plus the
apparently new means for its greater realization-freedom and equality
(values that are conspicuously absent from feudalism). However, the only
place where this ideal could be given an apparently concrete base was in
the maintenance of an old institution: the family. Thus the family
changed from being the economic basis of individual private property
under feudalism to being the focal point of the idea of individual
private property under a system that banished such an economic form from
its central mode of production-capitalism. (Mitchell 1973, 154)

She means in the last sentence that, under capitalism, most people
do not own or control their own piece of land any more; instead, big
businesses own factories where men and women go to work (1973, 153).

The family, then, lives beyond the period of its usefulness, as an
ideal that does not really benefit women, but which motivates them to
toil, so that their children will thrive, or at least not starve. In
fact, the family has already disintegrated physically, because its
members now labor in different places and for different bosses, and its
members may spend little actual time together, and have few interests in
common. But the idea of the family and the commitments it engenders make
women tolerate men, or even suffer their violence (156-58).

Arguably, de Cleyre's life and writings are better understood
as being anti-family in the way of Mitchell's analysis, which can
reasonably be described as feminist, but which is not, like the majority
of feminist writings, concerned about improving the status of women
within the flawed institution of the family. However, many contemporary
American feminists, including Betty Friedan, the equity feminists such
as Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Sommers, and the third wavers
generally reject such radical views. If de Cleyre is rightly to be seen
as a feminist, it could be in the sense that she defends the victims of
marriage, who live lives that are alien to her anarchist sensibility.
Marsh probably comes closest to agreement with this when she writes:

It was not the legal form of marriage, but the notion of men and
women living together in a nuclear family, whether formalized or
not, which she found intolerable. (1981, 144)

De Cleyre: More of an Anarchist than a Feminist?

If Voltairine de Cleyre is to be considered a feminist, then in
what ways would that appellation truthfully apply? What beliefs make
people non-feminists or incompatible with feminism? De Cleyre's
writings may be companionable with many of the multiple propositions of
feminism, but perhaps she can still not reasonably be termed a feminist
herself--at least, not without some qualification. As was argued above,
she is not easily reconciled with first or third wave feminists, with
equity feminism, nor with second wave ideas of people like Friedan or
Chesler, who call for moderation of the second wave position. Her ideas
have been embraced by some mainstream second-wavers, but the differences
between de Cleyre's opinions and theirs are extensive.

One reason for considering de Cleyre as an anarchist, but not as a
feminist, would be the priorities revealed in her own writings. She
developed the much-praised piece, "Why I Am An Anarchist,"
after all, but she never produced a polemic titled "Why I Am A
Feminist"--just some pieces that attacked the institution of
marriage, with both skill and force. Furthermore, de Cleyre saw her
predicament as being something that was shared by her fellow man. When
she writes about contemporary poverty, she laments the situation whereby
"any man who must wait the complicated working of a mass of unseen
powers before he may engage in the productive labor necessary to get his
food is the last thing but a free man" (2005, 58). Elsewhere, she
claims that people "who look on Man, as most Anarchists do,"
see the species "as a link in the chain of evolution" (69).
She was, after all, an anarchist, and she had no issues with describing
herself as a part of a species known as "man." She was a
writer, moreover, who was very particular about the words that she used.

Anarchism is at the heart of de Cleyre's oeuvre, and, talking
about a defining moment in her intellectual development, she confesses
that "[t]he State had now disappeared from my conception of
society; there remained only the application of Anarchism" (De
Cleyre 2005, 64). Implicitly, Horwitz, Kowal, and Palczewski (2008, 663)
seem to accept this when they write:

De Cleyre's goal clearly was empowerment, but not merely the
empowerment of women. Instead, she sought to instigate general
resistance in all members of her audience.

When Palczewski (1993, 147) describes de Cleyre's disdain for
marriage, she writes that "[t]he apologists for this slavery were
the traditional anarchist demons: church and state." Even when de
Cleyre attacks the family unit and the way that men behave in it,
ultimately she is making an anarchist argument against the suppression
of the individual. Similarly, Palczewski (1995, 56) writes:

The institutions that bound women to men and children caused de
Cleyre to question the role women were allotted in life. She concluded
that liberty, not the state, was the solution. (Palczewski 1995, 56)

This is anarchism, with de Cleyre's reference to liberty
reminding the reader of the doctrines of its more individualist forms;
it evokes Tucker, Lysander Spooner, or Max Stirner, for example. This is
the credo that Madison (1943, 444) is describing when he calls Tucker
the "chief American exponent of individualist anarchism, or the
doctrine of the stateless society with complete and equal liberty for
all." This is not a position that most feminists have held. As de
Cleyre herself expressed it in her essay, "Anarchism":

This is the particular message of Anarchism to the worker.... It
simply calls upon the spirit of individuality to rise up from its
abasement, and hold itself paramount. (De Cleyre 2005, 72)

When Palczewski (1995, 62) writes that "[t]he only limits de
Cleyre seemed willing to acknowledge were those established by the
individual woman" the question can be asked, would it not be better
to say "the individual person," because that, in a nutshell,
is what individualistic anarchism is about, regardless of whether or not
the individual is female or male?

Marso applies a second wave agenda to Emma Goldman, whom she
argues, "is far better known for her dramatic life and for her
anarchism than for any contribution to political and feminist
theory" (2003, 305). In addition to another criticism that might be
made of this argument, which would point out that anarchism has given
much to political theory, it can also be said that Marso seems to want,
like some of the appraisers of Voltairine de Cleyre, to craft Goldman as
a feminist, even though the latter has traditionally been considered,
and was even deported from the United States because she was, an
anarchist. For instance, she writes: "Goldman delivers an anarchist
dream of woman's desire to be free from oppressive social
conditions and expectations" (316). But surely, this is the dream
of all anarchists, irrespective of their gender?

To craft de Cleyre as a feminist, it is perhaps necessary to employ
a definition such as that of Shaw and Lee (2004, 9), who write that
"[b]ecause feminism is politics of equality, it anticipates a
future that guarantees human dignity and equality for all people, women
and men." That fits de Cleyre appropriately, but it needs to be
pointed out that, if such a definition represented the main concern of
many feminists today, perhaps we would see more of them campaigning to
end male on male rapes in jail, rather than viewing rape as a crime that
personifies gender relations.

Individualistic anarchism is also to be found near the beginning of
"Those Who Marry Do Ill," an essay that accounts for some of
the designation of Voltairine de Cleyre as a feminist. She writes:

What is the growing ideal of human society ... ? ... [T]he free
individual; a society whose economic, political, social, and sexual
organization shall secure and constantly increase the scope of being to
its several units; whose solidarity and continuity depend upon the free
attraction of its component parts, and in no wise upon compulsory forms
(De Cleyre 2004, 12; 2005, 198).

In the absence of marriage, de Cleyre also advocates anarchism and
individuality in sexual relations:

I would have men and women so arrange their lives that they shall
always, at all times, be free beings in this regard as in all others.
The limit of abstinence or indulgence can be fixed by the individual
alone, what is normal for one being excess for another, and what is
excess at one period of life being normal at another. (De Cleyre 2004,
14; 2005, 199)

In fact, de Cleyre's viewpoint resembles not those of most
feminists, but rather that of Benjamin Tucker ([1892] 1972, 15), who,
for example, writes of his desire for "a time when every
individual, whether man or woman, shall be self-supporting, and when
each shall have an independent home of his and her own." De
Cleyre's commitment to gender equality is apparent here, as it is
in "Sex Slavery," where she criticizes gender role
socialization. She is dismissive not only of the manner in which girls
are "restrained," but also of the way that boys are likewise
"laughed at as effeminate, silly girl-boys if they want to make
patchwork or play with a doll" (De Cleyre 2004, 101; 2005, 235).

Voltairine de Cleyre was an outstanding political thinker who
valued liberty and sought equality for men and women within an anarchist
framework of social justice that would watch over the needs of all
people, regardless of gender. To that end, she advocated the abolition
of marriage, which she considered a repressive and unnecessary
institution. Such a program is compatible with many feminist goals, but
it is not specifically a feminist approach, and thus the attribution of
the adjective "feminist" when de Cleyre is mentioned often
substantially distorts the record of her many intellectual achievements.
She can legitimately be called a feminist, if the specific context of
that term is outlined. Nevertheless, the greater truth is that she was
an anarchist of the first rank, and is well worth reading for that
reason, and for that reason alone.

References

Avrich, Paul. 1978. An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine
de Cleyre. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hooks, Bell. 2004. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love.
New York: Atria.

Horwitz, Linda Diane, Donna Marie Kowal, and Catherine Helen
Palczewski. 2008. "Anarchist Women and the Feminist Ideal: Sex,
Class, and Style in the Rhetoric of Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman
and Lucy Parsons." In The Rhetorical History of the United States,
ed. Martha Soloman Watson and Thomas Burkholder, Volume 5. East Lansing:
Michigan State University Press.

Huberman, Jack. 2007. The Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for
Non-Believers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally
Hellbound. New York: Nation.

Streeby, Shelley. 2007. "Labor, Memory, and the Boundaries of
Print Culture: From Haymarket to the Mexican Revolution." American
Labor History 19:406-433.

Sullivan, Dennis, and Kathryn Sullivan. 1998. "The Political
Economy of Just Community: A Radical Interpretation." Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology,
Washington, DC.

* Steve J. Shone, Ph.D. may be reached at loser@justice.com. His
book, Lysander Spooner American Anarchist will be published by Lexington
Books in May, 2010. A version of this paper was presented at the Annual
Meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association, in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 15-17, 2007. The author is grateful
to Francine D'Amico, Kathleen Iannello, Lee MacLean, and Catherine
Palczewski for helpful comments on earlier drafts.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Voltairine+de+Cleyre%3a+more+of+an+anarchist+than+a+feminist%3f-a0251377982

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Anarcha: Mother of Gynecology

It was after being part of anarcha.org that I learned of a woman named Anarcha, having nothing to do with anarcha-feminism, but whose story is very relevant. I was reminded of her recently by my friend Will who wants to study midwifery. Anarcha was a slave who was experimented on by a gynecologist numerous times without anesthesia.Anarcha: Mother of GynecologyAnarcha's Story